


to me speak softly

by maybetwice



Category: The Marriage of Aphrodite and Hephaestus (Greek Mythology)
Genre: Alternate Mythology, F/M, Falling In Love, Post-Divorce, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/maybetwice
Summary: The divorce could hardly be the end for Aphrodite and Hephaestus, when there is all of eternity ahead of them.
Relationships: Aphrodite/Hephaestus
Comments: 16
Kudos: 68
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	to me speak softly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!

_"Proclaim your pride and bitterness loudly to the world, but to me speak softly, and tell me simply that she doesn't love you."_   
—Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

*

A divorce ought to have felt like a distasteful thing for Aphrodite as she stood in Zeus’s hall and listened to the decree that broke the covenant between herself and her husband. Perhaps it was a shameful stain upon her, an admission that not all could be love and beauty when it came to Aphrodite.

Her chin lifted and her gaze set upon the halo of golden light that seemed to partly obscure the king’s face. It was easier to watch him, the pulsating glow of sun around him as when the clouds passed over the sky, than to look just to his side, where his wife sat in the shadow he cast.

Hera’s shrewd eyes watched her son, however, barely obscuring the pinched expression on her face. These proceedings could only seem like a repudiation of all she held sacred and an insult to the blessings she had bestowed upon a marriage she had orchestrated and presided over. Perhaps she was angry. Zeus seemed to think she must be, for he did not look once at his own wife as he spoke. Zeus Horkios, breaking the pledges of marriage Aphrodite and Hephaestus made to one another. 

Aphrodite did not think she was angry. 

“Love cannot be constrained to the marriage bed, Teleia,” she had warned the queen not long after she was betrothed, when Hera descended to Cyprus and walked among the waves that gave Aphrodite form. She had not wished to marry one she did not love, but neither had she wanted to deceive anyone of her intentions. She could not see how she might come to love him with time, even if she had all of eternity to learn how.

Hera had not been angry then, either. Aphrodite thought of the pitying look Hera spared in her direction, for the drape of her veil over her face in the halls of Olympus was the same as it had been that lovely day on Cyprus, but it was her words that seemed to echo through the hall when Hera finally looked from Hephaestus and captured Aphrodite’s gaze.

“The marriage bed is hardly all there is to a marriage, Ourania,” she had said cryptically, watching the birds of Cyprus take to the air with obvious fondness. “Perhaps you and Hephaestus will suit in ways you have not considered?”

But they could not suit. What did Hephaestus know of love? Aphrodite knew all there was to know about love, and there was nothing in all her knowledge that suggested she could ever love Hephaestus.

“My gratitude shall be eternal, Eleutherios,” Aphrodite announced, not caring at all that her words might be an insult.

*

Despite her thoughts on their suitability, marriage had not been entirely without its joys. Whatever model of marriage Hera demonstrated, Hephaestus was a generous husband in most things. He saved his finest works for her, carved her symbols in hidden places to mark them as hers, and then presented them with crooked smiles. He gave his time for her freely, and when she permitted him in her bed, Hephaestus gave himself freely to her.

Aphrodite had the unsettling notion that he believed he was in love with her. 

He wasn’t, of course. Were it true love, she might have been flattered, but the puppyish love of a man who loved the imagery of who she was could not be love at all. Generosity and kindness and one-sided illusions could not make a marriage. 

There is no aspect of love that Aphrodite did not know intimately, from its highest ideals to its basest impulses. Broken-hearted mortals called her fickle, named her Ourania and Androphonos alike, as though they could not reconcile that love is powerful in abundance and absence alike. Even the gods themselves called upon whichever aspect of her they had most need of in that moment.

Dionysus could love her as Philommeides. Sweet Adonis loved her as Pandemos and Ourania, had made Aphrodite feel love as passionate as that which mortals prayed to her for. Even Ares had love for her, for though it was a twisted sort of love that chained them together, for they were more alike than not. Passion could be as deadly as it was vital and living, could lead one to divinity or to darkness. Oh, perhaps Ares did not consider it as thoroughly as Aphrodite had, but he loved her for what she might otherwise have been ashamed. Neither her darkness nor her divinity threatened Ares.

What did Hephaestus love about her? That she was lovely, and that she loved all beautiful things? No, it was better that she was not loved at all than to be loved imperfectly.

_1510_

Like all the Olympians, Aphrodite took many names and lived in many places. It was easiest to live where she was exalted, but she had a particular fondness for Rome. Even returning to the banks of the Tiber after centuries in exile, when her cults fell from favor and her name became a curse, was as gratifying as walking the shores of Cyprus.

The streets and the people had changed somewhat, worshipful images of her likeness hinted to a virgin goddess wrapped in blue, but the essence of the seven hills and the river that divided them was the same as it ever had been. The salted air of the sea swept through the places where her altars once stood. Lovers still walked under the pines and whispered secrets to one another.

She was hardly the only Olympian to return to Rome for the city’s renewal, but Aphrodite was rarely far from mortals, and she was the first of them to arrive. Apollo and Athena came together, Hermes and Dionysus not long after. And Hephaestus, of course, came on a ship of iron and wood from across the sea.

“Polymetis,” she called him with a twinkling smile when she visited him in his workshop, her eyes tracing each curiosity laid out on his benches. The name suited him now more than any other, but Aphrodite idly wondered if he disliked that he was reduced to his purpose. “How long since you were last in Rome?”

“It has been a very long time,” he answered in his low, gravelly voice, resting his hammer on the anvil without looking up at her. “I am only here for a time.”

“You will be called away to other places?”

“Where I will be most needed.”

Aphrodite reached for a delicate, clockwork creation resting near the window. The metalwork was delicate, spun like spider’s lace in a master’s hand. The jewels that caught her eye in the sun were set lovingly in gossamer threads of gold. One side had a dove etched in the gold, so faint that perhaps it was not even visible to mortal eyes. She could not guess the purpose of the device, but the symbol reminded her of another place and time. Perhaps it was habit to him now, although she had never known him to do anything that was not carefully deliberated and flawlessly executed.

“It has been so long,” she mused, resting his creation back on the workbench, turning it so that the light would catch the jewels inside perfectly. When her eyes rose to his face, it looked as though he was holding his breath. “I had nearly forgotten there are none so talented as you in all the world.”

Aphrodite knew perfectly well that she was audacious in coming here as though they had not left one another a thousand years ago with all the warmth of two strangers. But perhaps a millenia was long enough to forget a great many things. Whatever she had felt when their marriage was dissolved was distant enough that she could hardly remember what she had disliked about it.

Hephaestus paused, as though considering his words carefully. “It could never be long enough that I might forget how lovely you are, Aphrodite.”

She had been called by many names over the ages, had taken many forms, but few were bold enough to name her as she was, not as she related to something else. “You flatter me,” she said at last. 

“Truth cannot be flattery,” he answered, returning his attention to his anvil. “It is also true that I cannot forget one who broke my heart.”

Her back straightened reflexively, and she drew her hands back to her chest. “My apologies. I thought fixing broken things was your particular specialty.”

“I may be master of all physical elements in the universe,” he explained, his serious eyes piercing hers over the distance of his blazing workshop. “But whatever element the heart is made of is yours to command, Aphrodite.”

*

Mortals were always moving on to the next thing, chasing some ideal of progress in a circular wheel of entropy: war, enlightenment, peace, decay, and then war. And between those were the small, mundane mysteries of love that made mortal life worthwhile. It was there that Aphrodite existed, tied as closely to mortal life as Hephaestus was, and just as devoted to them.

And so, true to his word, Hephaestus was called onward only a few years later. Though he was gone, his words remained, as softly devastating as ripples across a still lake, or waves across a great sea.

_1788_

It was nearly time for her to leave Paris, anyway.

The trinket was a gift from one of her admirers, albeit more lovely than most of their gifts were. Gifts of jewelry were not new to her, and she might have set it aside with flowers, perfumes and delicacies, had she not spotted the delicate shell engraved in a discreet corner, barely visible. A maker’s mark, of a sort. A calling card, perhaps.

She wanted to leave Paris now. That was what Aphrodite told herself when she boarded a ship for the north of England, not even the fashionable part of the country, if such a thing could truly exist. She was merely getting ahead of the inevitable, and she was curious. Not that she was afraid for her life, death was nothing to one such as she. No, Aphrodite had seen enough over the ages to know what was coming next, and though she hardly faulted mortals for choosing justice, there was nothing beautiful or lovely about what would come next.

She was curious and she meant to leave Paris, anyway. That was all.

*

Trends came and went, but he was the standard bearer of new ages in mortal civilizations, and he did not come somewhere for nothing at all. Aphrodite expected to see black smoke muddy the pristine winter sky, haze fading the blue-white heavens into a dour landscape. She had seen such things on her journey across the countryside, and that was what would have brought Hephaestus here.

When she arrived at the house the London solicitor had identified was his, it occurred to her that this was the second time she had sought him out. Three hundred years was no time at all. It was hardly enough time to forget the stinging rebuke Hephaestus had delivered in his soft-spoken voice.

She passed her calling card to the butler and was promptly delivered to a handsomely decorated room. Hephaestus had not ever lived _en mode,_ nor had he ever cared for frivolous things. Aphrodite studied his paintings with open curiosity, ran her gloved fingers across the keys of a pianoforte that stood proudly by the window. 

“Comtesse du Mer, I presume?”

She could not help her smile at the epithet she had chosen. “One of many names I am called.”

Hephaestus looked a great deal as he had in Rome, which was the same as he had on Olympus. Dressed in mortal fashions and his beard trimmed, he might have a passing resemblance to an ordinary human man, but it would always be a thin veneer over his true essence. Mortals might never know why they were drawn to him, as they were drawn to Aphrodite, but they would be just the same.

The question, then, was why she felt the same sort of attraction, like moths to flames and mortals to gods.

“This is a surprise to me," he went on, gesturing for her to sit. "Should I ring for a tea tray, or is this a short visit?"

“How very mortal,” she smiled, but she accepted the tea he poured for her not long after nonetheless. Its vapor smelled of smoke and flowers, but its heat never burned her fingers through the delicate porcelain cup Hephaestus passed to her. “I have always loved these little traditions of theirs.”

“You would return the hospitality if I ever called upon you, I am certain.”

“It would be required of me,” she remarked simply. But if she claimed guest-right now, what did it mean for all that had passed between them before? As stone could be worn down by the ages and refreshed by the mason’s chisel and hammer, beings such as them could only expect to be renewed by mortals with a new name and a new face to suit. Their essence remained unchanged.

Whether that was true for the bonds that existed between them, or not, was yet to be seen.

Hephaestus said, “I could hope for no more than that,” but it sounded incomplete. Whatever else he was thinking, he kept it to himself.

“I have a purpose here.” She opened her reticule and drew out the ornate necklace, which she set on the table between them. “This was gifted to me by a handsome young man who earned my favor.”

“My congratulations to him,” intoned Hephaestus dryly. “It is a fine piece.”

“You always did have such pride in your work,” Aphrodite beamed at him, for though Hephaestus might have been conscious of his appearance and his limp, he had never assumed the pretense of false humility when it came to his work. “As you should; it is very beautiful.” 

“It was not lost, if you are intending to return it to me.”

“No,” agreed Aphrodite, uncoiling the chain. Each link was intricately woven from innumerable strands of gold, but something of the design whispered of waves breaking upon a far-away shore. “I would have sent it by courier if I thought it had been misplaced. I think it is meant to be mine, however.”

Hephaestus did not look at the necklace. His eyes remained fixed on the movement of her fingers as she turned the jewel settings so the shell design would be visible. 

“Do you agree, Klytotekhnes?”

Curiosity was powerful, Aphrodite knew, but it was not so much curiosity about the necklace that had brought her to him here. It was the hint of something else, an echo of his words to her when she last saw him in Rome.

Neither she nor he could change their essence, and long had Aphrodite assumed that meant that they could not change the essence of their connection to one another. That long-severed bond between man and wife was proof enough that they did not suit, and yet here she had evidence of something that persisted.

“All beautiful things are yours,” he reminded her, taking up the necklace between his work-roughened fingers at last. “Should I not honor she who rules all things love and beauty when something I make is for her purposes?”

“Then you did not send this for me?” 

“I have no doubt the young man who won your favor felt love most sincerely.” His low, gravelly voice sounded sincerely sorry for her. “But I did not know its intended recipient when it was crafted.”

Aphrodite felt strangely disappointed that he had not, though the feeling gave way to some other emotion at the idea that he dedicated some of his crafts to her. “Is it something you do with all your work?” she asked, folding her hands in her lap. 

She wanted to ask him whether he thought of her often when he did his work, but she held her tongue. By the shrewd expression in his eyes when he studied her, however, Aphrodite thought he knew what she really meant.

“Yes,” answered Hephaestus at last, and she knew it was in answer the question she had not asked.

*

“You mean to start a scandal by staying here without a chaperone,” he told her when she asked him to show her the countryside in his chaise, but his serious expression softened at her merry laugh.

“My very existence is a scandal to these mortals,” she remarked pointedly, looping her arm through his with a fond wave to a couple passing on horseback. “They venerate me in name, but it would do them all some good if I stayed a while.”

“Had Eris been to visit you before you came here?”

Aphrodite hesitated, turning her head curiously in his direction. She had never known Hephaestus to joke. But then, what had she truly known before?

_The marriage bed is hardly all there is to a marriage, Ourania._

Hera’s words came unbidden to her, so clearly as if she sat beside them. Even in her impetuous youth, Aphrodite had not thought the marriage bed was all there was to love, either. She knew all the darkened corners of passion, but the familiarity and ease of enduring love? Aphrodite did not often dwell there.

“You once told me that I had broken your heart,” she began. “Have you yet mended it?”

“I have not yet learned the means,” Hephaestus answered with a grim sort of smile, gripping the reins tighter. “Perhaps one day you will teach me.”

*

“The social season begins in London, and there I will make my debut,” she told Hephaestus when he saw her off the following week. She cocked her head to the side as the thought came to her unbidden. “You could come with me.”

“What use do mortals have for me there?” he asked plainly, with no bitterness at all. “No, I am better suited here, and you will flourish there. Eros will make you fine company, I think.”

Aphrodite smiled to think of her son, but she bent down from the door of her carriage and kissed Hephaestus on his bearded cheek. “Then I shall see you again, Hephaestus.”

“This is for you,” he said, pressing a small package into her hands and waiting to see if she would open it. “Not merely made in your name.”

The brooch was beautifully made _en tremblant,_ with six prominent rubies as seeds of a split pomegranate hanging from a beautiful likeness of its flowering tree. Aphrodite traced the filigree patterns of the coral flowers in awestruck silence.

“A tribute to one of my finest works,” she remarked at last. “I am honored.”

“May all your work yield such sweet success as it did for them.”

Whatever she meant to say in answer died in her throat, for when she looked up again, he was gone.

*

To her surprise, Hephaestus answered the letters she sent thereafter. His letters were artless, short, straightforward missives written in his blunt manner. Aphrodite wrote him long letters enumerating her successes among mortals, or detailing the slights against her in furious detail. Hephaestus answered these with measured patience, but she never had the sense that he misliked the fluidity of her moods.

And so her moods shifted toward him. He was constant and serious, the qualities of devotion that she had begun to appreciate with time. And though she had always thought him unfeeling, Aphrodite had begun to think instead that he was merely protective of his sensitivities.

Aphrodite might not have understood the ways that she and Hephaestus might suit when Hera had told her so on the shores of Cyprus, but she was beginning to understand now. Though their work rarely converged, it was some comfort to her to know where he was: as time passed, more often than not, he worked once again alongside Athena and Ares.

_Mortals are ever the same,_ wrote Hephaestus. _Their need for me is eternal, but my talents are sought too often in service to suffering and brutality, and almost never to venerate that which is precious to you._

She thought he was wrong about that. His works were apparent to her everywhere she went, and while there were surely many that were intended for death or pain, Aphrodite thought Hephaestus discounted some of the finer gifts he bestowed upon mortals. There were a great many that were beautiful, that she would have been delighted beyond measure if they bore her symbols. But fewer and fewer things seemed to be marked with a sign that Hephaestus thought his work honored her. Perhaps he was too deep in that which was dark and to see what was beautiful about what he had done.

That, she supposed, was something she could remedy. Only now she did she know he would never ask her to come himself, that he would forever leave the choice to her.

_1967_

“I suppose you know that airplanes are a marvel,” she said by way of greeting, sliding her sunglasses back through her golden hair, cascading down her back. “I made it here from San Francisco in a matter of hours.”

Hephaestus looked up from his tools, tiny versions of things she had seen him use a thousand times over the ages. “Much as I would like to pride myself on the design, Athena had a great deal to do with the calculations.”

“Revolutionary,” she declared, peering down at the circuitry he was working on. On another table were designs for something else that she supposed was a grand secret, but Aphrodite had watched in wonder as mortals launched themselves beyond the grip of the Earth. She could hardly be unaffected by the beautiful images they sent back. “I suppose you have spent a great deal of time between here and the Soviet Union.”

“Have you?”

Aphrodite flashed him another smile, adjusting her tiny skirt as she approached him. “I spend a great deal everywhere, you know, but I like to be where my talents are most appreciated.”

“And yet, here you are,” he observed, setting aside his tools with a cautious expression that once would have set her on her guard. But now she understood him better than she had before.

“Here I am,” she agreed, pausing to appreciate the symmetrical beauty of his mechanical creation. “Did you dream of flying machines and sending mortals to the stars when we were younger?”

“I knew it would come to pass one day.”

“Ah,” she tutted with her ever-present smile, reaching out to straighten the collar of his shirt where it had become unfolded and wrinkled. “I asked whether you dreamed of it.”

“I dreamed of different things entirely.”

“And what do you dream of now?”

Hephaestus reached for her hand where it lingered on his shoulder, holding it like a dove in his own, as though he was afraid she would take flight and leave. Aphrodite answered by resting her other palm on his cheek.

Though she was intimately familiar with how the face of one’s beloved could become beautiful when struck with love, and though she had come to him suspecting it, the revelatory swell of affection in her chest was love struck Aphrodite as abruptly as Eros’ sting. 

“My dreams are the same as they always were,” he admitted at last with grudging honesty, perhaps his last defense against the echoes of his last heartbreak. “Against my better senses.”

“You showed me devotion all these ages, and I broke your heart,” she admitted at last, drawing his arm around her and caressing the hard line of his jaw. “I did not think you loved me as I am, only as I appear to be.”

“Do you believe otherwise now?” His eyes told her plainly that he had always seen her as she was. Maddening though she might be, fickle and proud, he had seen and loved all of her, and it had taken her an age to see him as he was. “You are not telling me now that you love me.” 

“No,” said Aphrodite as she held him close, her cheek pressed to his and her hands folded around his neck. “I will show you instead.”

**Author's Note:**

> I played fast and loose with some mythological and historical elements here, mostly in service to convenience and story. My apologies to any and all whose eyes may have twitched at this.


End file.
